


Divine Interference

by teaandchess



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 09:12:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaandchess/pseuds/teaandchess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: A SPN, Megstiel version of Disney’s Hercules’ plunge into river Styx. Really the only similarity is the idea of the plunge itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Divine Interference

**Divine Interference**  
    
 _I found of you one such, who for his deeds_  
In soul already in Cocytus bathes,  
 _And still above in body seems alive! ~ Dante’s Divine Comedy_

  
    “Gives literal meaning to the term ‘Hell hath frozen over’, don’t you think?” Crowley asked and he made a show of shuddering and drawing his coat closer to his chest. His eyes weren’t on the icy landscape but on the angel standing nearby. An angel who was paying him an insulting lack of attention.  
    Castiel lifted his head a little, aware that for the third time he was standing in the dominion of Hell surrounded by enemies ready to rip out his throat. With a shrug of his shoulders, his extended wings folded and disappeared from view, leaving only a glimmer of light at his back. It soon formed a halo around his body that kept him warm against the cold. With an eye on the paw prints of a  hellhound pack that strained on the ends of their tethers to get to him and the demons still ready to attack him, he divided his attention between what had happened and what might happen if he didn’t watch his back. The demons were being kept back thanks to Crowley, but there was no comfort in the way those shadowy masses kept writhing hungrily for his blood.  
    Still, the snow and ice surrounding him somehow managed to be more intimidating.  
    “You revived Hell’s Lakes,” the angel whispered. The icy breeze sweeping through this section of Hell made his coat flutter around his body but he didn’t feel the chill. His skin still felt a little overheated from his plunge through the outer circles where flames and furnaces were common.  
     ”Well, the old punishments are often the best, you know. By some definition, I am a true traditionalist,” Crowley admitted with a mock sense of humility. Castiel gave him a condescendingly placid look and the King of Hell reached down to pet the head of his favourite hellhound. The beast, invisible to Castiel, rumbled a low threat to the angel but Castiel ignored it.  
    He’d been through too much in the past three days to worry about a simple beast.  
    “Do the boyfriends know you’re here?”  
    The implication made Castiel roll his eyes and look back out over the frozen lake. “I came alone. This isn’t their fight.”  
    “Oh sure, because they were _so_ impressed the last time you made a deal with me.” Crowley shook his head. Castiel shifted from foot to foot, trying to see through the blinding shine of snow on ice. He was starting to feel the cold now and Crowley noticed the way he pulled his coat a little tighter around his chest. “Funny how each minute snuffs out a little piece of your Grace when you’re here. Not like the Pit, which blackens it. Here it… just kills it slowly.”  
    Castiel didn’t need a reminder of what the Pit could do to an angel.  
    “Not that I care, don’t misunderstand me.” The demon checked his nails. “But you do realize I hope how absurd it is for you to claim to owe anything to a whore.”  
    “I doubt you’d understand,” Castiel muttered, ignoring the insult. He doubted any demon or angel would understand and he was sure sometimes he didn’t understand either. It had all happened so quickly and so intensely. After Meg’s return, their odd partnership had started to develop an even odder friendship. A strange devotion of a shared cause had kept them from killing each other and unexpectedly he enjoyed her presence in his life as a reminder of how he himself used to be. Loyal to a cause, rebelling against her family to prove her cause just too similar by far but he… he liked her. Liked having her thorny nature lingering nearby to constantly bring him back to heel, liked the way she would struggle to get him to understand. In moments when he felt most fallen, he even liked her constant flirtations and nearly predatory attempts at seduction.  
    Then she had to go and do something foolish like save his life. She’d ended up sacrificing her hard-won freedom with no explanation as to why, and she’d been pulled down to Hell itself by other demons and hellhounds before he could stop her deal.  
    But not to the Pit this time.  
    This time she was somewhere worse, somewhere even more difficult for an Angel, righteous or fallen, to access. Buried in the depths of frozen Cocytus, even Castiel had to admit a morbid poetry in Crowley’s punishment for her. A lake of suffering frozen over by the very despair it brought. A place he hadn’t seen since flying through Hell to save Dean Winchester and even then it had been in passing. He’d touched the other rivers, the other damning waters, but for some instinctive reason that gnawed at his mind, this one filled him with dread.  
    “It would be remarkably easy to have the hounds rip you to shreds,” Crowley said when the silence was too long, “since they have a taste for chicken feathers.”  
    “You offered me a deal once. I’m offering you one.”  
    Crowley gave a rude snort. “Please. You don’t have a thing to bargain with, Castiel. You’ve got no soul, no standing in Heaven really. Beyond your Grace, you are nothing.”  
    The smug tone in his voice made Castiel aware that the King of Hell was more out of the loop than he realized.  
    “You know that the plunge may drain all my Grace. If it destroys my Grace, you can keep me here, in my other form, fallen and broken.” He took a single step towards him. “You wanted me intact, remember? Sane and aware that you can rip me apart to lord it over me. Here’s your chance to prove to yourself you can finally defeat me.”  
    “And if it doesn’t drain you?” His voice was bored but there was an odd thrill at perhaps throwing the dice for a chance to destroy Castiel.  
    “I thought you enjoyed a gamble, Crowley. It’s a sin, remember?” Castiel smirked. “Or are you sure you can handle me here?”  
    Crowley’s eyes almost glimmered with hot appreciation. “Ai-chi-wa-wa, Sparkles, you give me tingles when you talk like that.”  
    He leaned a little to the side. “You propose an interesting bargain. Say you get her out, I’ll let her go. But in return, the minute your Grace is drained, and it will be because nothing comes out of Cocytus intact, you are on the table and getting ripped apart. I had your little brother for a while so trust me when I say I know what I’m doing.”  
    The angel looked away; he remembered how badly Samandriel had been scarred by what Crowley had done to him.  
    “Let’s give you a shot. Either way I win. The whore goes topside, she’ll still be a target for any Hunter worth his salt. She’ll be back in my sweet embrace one way or another.” Crowley gestured for the demons to step back and Castiel glanced at them. “They’ll stay back.”  
    The angel nodded and turned back to the lake, taking a single step onto the frozen surface.  
    One of the demons stepped forward and muttered in Crowley’s ear.  
    “Of course not. The minute he surfaces, you all are to grab him. He’ll be mortal, remember?” Crowley whispered back, so low that Castiel couldn’t hear him. He smacked the demon in the head and shoved him back. He shouted out pleasantly, “Good luck, Sparkles.”  
    Castiel walked out onto the lake, still so far away from the centre that it could take hours before he was even close to where the souls were writhing.  
    “They’re going to pull you apart anyway.” Crowley snapped his fingers at the hellhounds and they set out across the ice after the angel, tracking him like bloodhounds after a rabbit.  
     
    Castiel felt the hounds at his back, their hot foul breath against his heels, and he sighed. Typical Crowley.  
    Flexing his wings in slow movement, he launched himself forward and in heartbeat he was in the centre of Cocytus, only a half-raised corpse frozen to the ice acting as a type of marker. The hellhounds and demons were far behind, hours and miles away, and he was alone. The ice beneath him was covered in thick packing snow and it radiated such dry cold that he could feel it through the bottom of his shoes. Ignoring the way his skin started to prickle in reaction, he knelt down and swept a layer of the snow to the side.  
    Only thousands of years of training, of absolute faith, kept him from being horrified by what he saw. Just beneath the thick layer of ice was a multitude of green and blue corpses with sunken  eyes and howling mouths. Souls swam back and forth in mindless formation and the ice seemed to thicken whenever one approached the surface. He placed a hand on the ice, scratched his nails down the surface to clear it, and simply tried to feel what lay beneath.  
    Demons, monsters, mortals, fallen… all of them lingered in the depths of the lake. Some still had bodies, others were nothing more than transparent souls. He could feel their desperation and lack of faith. All were screaming for escape. Castiel could hear their wailing cries, feel their pain and the way hope had been burned from them. Acheron, Lethe and the other rivers flowed into Cocytus, bringing their undercurrents of pain and punishment.  
    But he was trying to find one very specific demon and he tried to deafen himself to the wailing.  
    “Where are you?” Castiel whispered as he stared through the ice and watched the bodies swim around.  
    “Tick tock, Sparkles. I haven’t got all day.” Crowley had appeared behind him, alone and apparently so bored and unsure why he was bothering with the angel in the first place.  
    Ignoring him, he kept his eyes on the souls below.  
    In what felt like hours but was only seconds, he strained his vision for Meg. The true forms of the demons swirled black and grey in his vision, the agony of their suffering strangely touching a part of him he had hoped had died. The part that had made him an incorruptible angel and yet a fallen one because he could feel their pain. He felt for all of them.  
    In a moment of frustration, he slammed his hand against the ice. As if it was a signal, the souls parted just enough for him to see her. A tiny blur of a smoky soul still inside a meatsuit, still somehow shining within the dullness of the dark depths of Cocytus, but buried in layers, called to him. Layers of ice and decays yet still he could see Meg there. She shifted restlessly as she was surrounded by the less corporeal souls that had given up out of despair and hid now to avoid further punishment.  
    But Castiel saw what he was bargaining for and that was all that mattered to him.  
    Standing up again, he let his angel sword fall into his hand, the hilt rolling into his palm. It hummed to him like a comforting old friend and he tightened his fingers around it. Crowley eyed it nervously, backing up a few steps when the angel looked at him.  
    “Long way down, Castiel. Ice is thick too, full of despair and agony. At least I think it is. Could be nothingness there.” He teetered on his toes to look down, seeing Meg as well and he snarled. “Might be a good idea to let her stay there. You know I enjoy her being here at home. Pulled out for the occasional slice of course. She has been pretty resilient.”  
    Castiel looked away from the demon and closed his eyes, sucking in a deep breath. His Grace flared around him in a brilliant show of white light and sparking blue flame, building in heat and power until he glowed like a beacon. In the distance, the hellhounds began to howl furiously but he kept himself calm, feeling Crowley back further away. When his eyes opened again they were incredibly neon blue though there were now white rings within the blue. Raising his angel sword, his wings flared out around him before he went to a knee, slamming the blade deep into the thick ice.  
    Cocytus shook at the first strike, the entire centre of Hell itself cracking under the force, and thunder began to rumble in the air as lightening split the red sky. The ice splintered into large floes, rising in the air around the angel as the water surged up, and Crowley blinked out to avoid being struck by Castiel’s Grace. Massive shards of thick ice flew upwards and Castiel tilted his head back and shouted out a single word before the darkness below him sucked him down.  
  
  
    Excruciating pain pulled at his body, tearing at his well worn vessel while icy fingers dug into every nerve of his body. He slowly drifted into the darkness until he finally managed to twist himself around so he was diving headfirst into the thick slush of decaying souls. His wings folded against his back and he felt as if he was being buffeted back and forth by wind though his body barely moved. Every time he tried to suck in air, his lungs would fill with thick, cold black fluid and he’d have to choke it back up before it froze inside his body.  
    This was nothing like tearing Dean Winchester off the rack, like sneaking Sam from the clutches of Michael and Lucifer’s Cage. Then there had been a thrill, a challenge, a battle of flames and darkness against righteous light. Where only his faith had kept him and he knew he was doing what God wanted. Now? Now it wasn’t God’s Will at all.  
    It was his own will and he was suffering for it.  
    There was only wailing despair surrounding him, pulling him deeper into a darkness that blotted out any light above him. Where once the heat of Hell had darkened his wings with ash and shadow, now the cold currents stripped them of colour, made them translucent and fragile. He felt the cramping sensation go through his bones but he forced himself to begin swimming down.  
    Slowly, like moths to a glow, the souls that surrounded him began to grab hold of him, clinging to his body and wings. So desperate for escape, the moment they sensed he was not one of them they suddenly began to all wrap around him. He heard their wailing cries in his ears as they tried to absorb his strength, nearly sucking on the power he radiated. Each stroke downwards was a new experience in agony, despair ripping through him, but his wings slowly powered through the ice and slush surrounding him. Castiel kept his eyes open, focussing on getting to the bottom. He swam even as he felt the pain wrapping around his heart and squeezing it tight, stopping it for a few beats and then releasing it for a few more beats.  
    Slowly, Cocytus began to have its effect on him the deeper he dove.  
    His wings stuttered, no longer moving in sure strokes but slow paddling motions around him, his arms aching from effort and his legs suddenly so cramped he could barely move his ankles. When he looked around, he saw bodies and souls suddenly forming a barrier near the ice he’d broken through, blocking him from escape. More souls soon clung to him, dragging him down with them and he kicked out to try to dislodge them. But when one let go, three more would grab tight to the angel.  
    Closing his eyes, he let them drag him down with their weight and his wings stopped moving to counter them. It was effortless to let them take him down and he waited until the darkness surrounding him was so intense that no matter how his dying Grace shone through, the shadows never lifted. He was so far from the Light of God now that he realized why Crowley had been so confident he’d be stripped of all power. Here he felt no warmth of Light or even a phantom sense of faith.  
    Castiel felt utter despair now that he was going to be forever trapped in this darkness to suffer this pain of loneliness.  
    Until he felt something collide against him that did not have the malice of the other souls. There was an almost affectionate slap of a hand on his face that stung.  
    “Impotent sap,” a disembodied but familiar voice said in his mind and his eyes opened slowly, as if he was being dragged from a deep sleep. “You’re losing your Grace. You’re going to die down here.”  
    Meg’s almost ghostly visage drifted below him, just out of reach now as the souls around him grabbed him and tried to hold him in their midst. Castiel swallowed down a sudden rise of bile when he saw her resignation to her fate, her meatsuit already dying now that it had been submerged so long. Her demonic soul was sustaining it but he could see the strain it was having on her body and her power. The souls were leaving her alone in favour of him right now and he struggled to beat one off his chest as it wrapped like a snake around his torso. It felt like his ribs were being crushed by a snake and he twisted himself around, realizing they were now entering another portion of Hell due to the lake waters. Meg was already drifting away, pulled by an undercurrent of Lethe’s oblivion even Castiel could feel, and he knew he was going to lose her. Once they entered that area, they’d both forget to fight.  
    He’d failed too many times before and yet managed to fix his mistakes, but he would not fail now.  
    Growling, he folded his wings close to his body again before thrusting them out in a flurry that sent the water into a wave around him and beat back the parasitic souls. The creatures shrieked furiously but he dove down and reached out. His heart stopped again, this time in fear, until his fingers wrapped around a thin ice cold arm. Whatever was pulling at her pulled him down as well and he went down with Meg, slowly drawing her up towards him the way he’d pulled the Winchesters so long ago. He felt tiny skeletal-like fingers grab his arms before slipping through his coat and around his waist.  
    “You’re a fool, Clarence. I like you anyways for trying.” Her words echoed in his head and he shook his head fondly.  
    Thorny creature never could say thank you.  
    They were suspended in the dark water, unable to see each other, but he managed to twist himself around her, wings folding around her to protect them both from the souls starting to turn around them.  
    But even though he had her, his Grace was dying: he could feel its drain. He was exhausted and so was she. Even though she was used to hellfire and pain, the despair and oblivion of the lake had the same effect on her that it had on him. Meg tightened her fingers on his sides and he felt her shudder. Bowing his head, he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder as they started to sink again beneath another layer of souls.  
    They were going to be trapped here for eternity until they forgot why they’d been put here in the first place, until despair made them drift apart.  
    Castiel tightened his grip on her waist and felt her own grip squeezing him.  
    Then, before he could speak to her any apology, something soft whistled in his ears. Too high pitched for a demon to hear but clear as a song to him. His head suddenly felt full of white noise and he blinked, not lifting his head and just staring into dark nothingness behind his wings.  
    _“Father says that it took you so long to learn about free will that he was giving up on you, little brother. Doing what is right and what is needed is such a hard length of rope for you to hang yourself with, considering you have to make multiple knots.”_  
     The voice was like a baritone bell in his head one moment but on the echo it was female and sultry. As if two people were in his head and fighting to say the same thing in an overlap. Gripping Meg closer, he closed his eyes and saw a clear vision in his head of a sexless creature. Much like one of his own brethren but somehow more sedate and less chaotic. Its glow was so overpowering that he couldn’t see features beyond six pairs of wings spread out beyond it in a golden glow similar to Michael or Raphael.  
    The words were so precise in his head and he whimpered in realization when he realized only one other angel existed who could enter Hell with no fear for repercussions.  
    _The angel who became Enoch to teach humans that God could be kind… Metatron… the Word personified in a Scribe._  
    _“Though this plot has taken a rather interesting twist, we cannot have you sacrificing yourself to Crowley. He’d be able to penetrate Heaven with what he finds inside your head, and the souls down here would absorb your power and he’d have a new flow of demons at his command.”_ Metatron’s wings beat in the air and sent a rush of warmth through him. He nearly felt revived again. _“Such strange times, when angels sacrifice for demons and demons devote themselves to an angelic cause. But these are strange days, thanks to the Winchesters. You should keep a more watchful eye on their actions, you know.”_  
    Then, with a snap of lightening that blinded Castiel for a moment, Metatron was gone and he was wrapped around Meg once again in the dark depths of Cocytus.  
    He felt her arms tighten on his waist and again her voice was in his ears instead of Metatron. “You’re warm.”  
    Her words echoed in his head, softer than Metatron’s booming layered tones, and he realized that the flood of warmth in his body was familiar. And slowly building within. As if God had touched him with Light. Castiel heard the wailing increase around them though the grip on his body from the other souls lessened a little. The water even parted until it felt like he could breathe again and move around in the thick slush of ice and bodies.  
    He lifted his head from her shoulder and looked at her, and then jerked a little. He could see Meg now. Clear as if they were in daylight and as if they were in their regular bodies on Earth with no darkness. Just over her shoulder he could see the souls shifting around, looking full of rage and despair at the sight of his Grace burning so bright. The demon winced a little when the light flared and closed her eyes, and he tightened his grip around her smaller body. Reaching up with one hand, he touched her forehead and felt a rush of her mind connecting with his.  
    “Hold on to me and don’t let go no matter what happens,” he warned in her mind and even that connection couldn’t hide the strain he felt. She sighed and her head nodded against his collarbone.  
    “Sure thing, hot stuff. Let me know when we’re really screwed so I can give you a good stabbing then, ‘kay?”  
    “Demons,” he muttered. “Always so hopeful.”  
    “All can’t be shining goodness like you, Clarence.” But her arms slipped around his neck and her head lowered. “It’s gonna hurt?”  
    “It might. Close your eyes.”  
    He looked up, at the sea of souls overhead blocking the broken ice he’d come through. Where they swam around like a top school of fish, he saw that the ice was quickly re-growing into a layer. His grip tightened around Meg and he spread his wings out, sending thousands of souls shrieking as the light he suddenly exuded slammed in an arc against them.  
    ~~  
    Crowley watched the broken ice while popping the occasional mint into his mouth and chewing slowly. He was waiting for Castiel’s grace to dim out. The souls within would let him know, he was sure of it. They were hungry for anything and he waited for their wails to turn to the snarling roar of a feeding frenzy. Once Castiel was harmless, he’d send in something to go retrieve the fallen angel and bring him back for some play time.  
    The whore could remain there, bloated and useless, for all he cared. She’d served her purpose in letting him find another weakness in the angel. An unexpected one but still a weakness.  
    “What is taking so bloody long?” Crowley demanded and the hellhounds beside him growled eagerly.  
    But the air suddenly grew still and Hell’s icy winds died completely down. The King of Hell slid his hand down to his pocket, thoughtfully looking around and finding nothing out of the ordinary. Yet the air was so still.  
    Something snapped then in Hell, like a band pulled too tight and finally breaking,  and the entirety of Cocytus seemed to _**bend**_. Crowley’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head as the lake itself inverted downwards into a bowl, ice cracking into large floes once again and the water starting to churn.  Standing at the edge of the one piece of ice kept together by his power, he stared into the depths in amazed fury. The souls still swam in their aimless yet furious way and there was nothing to tell him why Cocytus was in an uproar.  
    Then he spotted it. A tiny ember of light, so far down that it was nearly lost in the shadows, and pulsing like a heartbeat. He’d never seen anything like it before and Crowley waved a hand to scatter the hellhounds when they tried to look as well.  
    Then the light started to move and the rumbling in Cocytus grew louder and louder. The wails of the dead made an odd harmony with the thunder suddenly rumbling in the hellish sky, and Crowley realized that his plan was about to go wrong.  
  _He should be without Grace, without Light now that he’d been submerged in one of the most painful areas of Hell!_  
    Like a meteorite, the light shot up through the dark water and ice and the concave of Cocytus continued to grow. Crowley screamed for his demons but it was too late as the last remaining layer of ice cracked and the light exploded out. The lake itself shot up in a spray of water and slush, punished souls landing like caught fish to flop around on the shoreline. But Crowley didn’t care about them.  
    Castiel’s vessel was melding with his true form now, and the sight of Meg’s smoking form in his arms made it clear he was making an escape.  
    Crowley saw white wings and gloriously repulsive light and his scream of anger was bloodcurdling. The light continued to move through the burnt darkness of Hell, past the boundary of the centre and flying into the surrounding circles. As one, the demons smoked out over the beacon of light and Crowley himself led the group this time, a choking red smoke curling through their grey.  
    Castiel’s wings beat harder through the smoke thick sky, sending cool air through the furnaces of Hell, but no matter how fast he was or how light Meg was, he could still feel the demons just behind him. At his wing tips was Crowley’s red smoke, singing the edges of his feathers and burning them. Crowley tore at the white feathers and at the light, cursing the angel as they both flew. Castiel twisted mid-air and kicked out with a snarl to dislodge him but he felt the pain go through his legs. His Grace continued to propel him forward and they slammed through circle after circle of Hell, through barriers and rooms, all to the stunned fear of the souls and demons trapped.  
     Pressed into the angel and finally opening her eyes to see what was happening, Meg strained for her own power. She muttered instructions for the angel, back routes not even Crowley was really aware of, and he spun in the air like a beautiful winged dancer with her still clutched tight to his chest to do as she said. But even as he flew, Meg felt a taloned grip on her leg, starting to tug her from Castiel’s grip and she looked down to see Crowley’s true form gleaming through the smoke. He snarled in Latin, the guttural sound lost in the shrieking winds, and Castiel’s blurred form did a spiral in the air before climbing upwards.  
    Castiel’s fingers clenched around her body but the heat was making it slippery.  
    She dropped her hand down his chest and felt for the blade he carried as they came to the outer circles. The angel sword hummed in her grip just as Crowley started to pull her down. She struck out with a slice and the silver glow pierced the dark heat around them just before she sliced off his fingers. Crowley’s form went limp for a moment and she found herself losing her own grip as his weight pulled at her. Castiel dove down and caught her back up, his arm wrapping around her stomach and his feathers scorching on the small of her back.  
    The King of Hell’s screaming below meant nothing as they broke through reality together in a flash of grey light.  
~~  
  
    They both woke on cold snow and hearing nothing of Hell’s screams and fury. As they lay side by side, both smoking and scorched and panting for breath in the snow, even they found clear air was a blessing. The roaring sound was gone, the hot furnaces of Hell already fading and leaving sweat cold and damp on their bodies. Castiel had brought them out in the exact location he’d left and his supplies were still in place. The workings of the spell, the wards to protect his entrance and exit and to keep any attack at bay, the spare clothing he’d brought. Even his phone was still there with the time gleaming back at him.  
    What had felt like weeks had been but seconds.  
     Castiel sucked great gulps of air in greedily before he rolled to his stomach. His fingers fisted in the snow, finding it real and not as cold as Hell’s ice, and with a relieved sigh he raised his head. His eyes cleared a little and he felt the breeze ruffle his hair.  
    “Thank you, Father,” he whispered and he saw one of the stars above glimmering as if in answer. He bent his head again, murmuring another prayer of thanks before he turned to look at the demon lying beside him  
    Her meatsuit still smoked a little, her clothing torn around her body, and various wounds from their escape showing in bloody marks and burned patches. A long claw mark dragged from her knee to her heel and whenever she shifted, Castiel saw the blood oozing out of her. Ignoring the pain in his back from his abused wings, he crawled over her and braced his arms over her head.  
    “Meg?”  
    Dark eyes flicked open immediately and she took a moment to look around. “We’re out.”  
    “We are,” he murmured, sitting up and quickly laying a hand on her bare leg. The skin sizzled as he healed it, but despite the power he poured into her a long scar was left.  
    “You just had to be the white knight, huh?”  
    He didn’t bother to puzzle that out while she sighed and closed her eyes again. Instead, he quickly catalogued the damage he’d suffered and what she still displayed. His phone chirped and he saw Dean’s text message pop up asking if it was time to pick him up, if he was okay. He reached out, but stopped himself from answering. It could wait.  
    “Why did you do that?” he asked while pocketing the phone and he leaned back over her when she took too long to answer. She was so still that for a moment he thought she’d passed out but then her eyes opened again, black this time. “Answer me. Why did you make such a stupid deal?”  
    “Why did you come into Hell?” she countered and he sighed.  
    “Because I had to. Because…”  
    There was no answer he could give her that didn’t make him wonder how far he’d fallen.  
    “There we go. Neither of us knows. Let’s not make a big deal about the why. We do crazy things sometimes for…” She closed her eyes again and then sat up slowly, pushing him back to give herself some space. Castiel knelt and watched her slowly try to balance herself. “But you made me proud, hot stuff. All storming into Hell and showing off the wings. I felt like Dean Winchester, all a quiver for your masterful ways.”  
    Ignoring her playful sarcasm, he stared at her as she stood on shaky legs and stretched her arms over her head. Catching sight of her back, he sucked in a breath so sharply that she turned.  
    “What?”  
    He shook his head and looked away. “Nothing.” Castiel stood and reached out with his palm up. Meg hesitated before putting her hand in his, looking as if his touch might burn her.  
    “Thanks.” He tilted his head at her. “You didn’t have to come get me but you did. Makes you the first one to ever try that.”  
    “You’re welcome.”  
    She turned away, looking around the clearing. “Going to call Dean and get him to pick you up or are you winging us to God knows where to pick up where we left off”  
    Castiel stared at the back of her head before he ran his eyes down her back to the mark there. Without thinking, he reached out and laid his hand against the long strip of scar tissue there now from the touch of his wings. It looked like feathers had scorched her skin and given her a strange tattoo. Meg spun around at the cold touch of his hand and stared up at him. He stared back and when she didn’t flinch from his hand he leaned down a little.  
    “I’m glad I found you.”  
    Meg smirked and he felt her hand at his collar, tugging on the loose tie a little. “How were you able to get us out anyway?”  
    He didn’t move away but he wasn’t ready to completely answer that question. “You likely have an idea.”  
    “That’s not an answer,” Meg muttered and he nodded. Something in his look made her fidget a little. He caught her by the chin before she could pull away and leaned down. His mouth brushed over hers as he tilted her head up and she stood still, looking at him critically. “An angel nearly made a deal to save a demon. You got issues, feathers.”  
    “More than a few,” he agreed. He pressed a quick kiss to her mouth and heard her huff impatiently, fingers tightening on his collar. Before he could pull back she was pressing up into him, tasting of hellfire and ice and he kissed her back, feeling her other hand at his side. The odd sensation of relief made him break the kiss and stare down at her.  
    “Okay, so… you’re definitely a bit more touchy-feely. You must have missed me,” she whispered. Meg’s eyes opened hesitantly and she blinked. “Come on. What happened down there?”  
    “Free will,” Castiel admitted and she gave him a confused scowl. Smiling, he bent his head and kissed her again, allowing his relief to show and felt her relax a little. Meg winced and pulled back and without asking he looped an arm around her waist to help her stay steady. “It wouldn’t hurt you to admit you need help, Meg.”  
    She rolled her eyes but accepted his arm.  
    “You really are something else sometimes, tree-topper.”  
     ”Is that a good thing?” he asked as they limped out of the clearing.  
    “Let you know when we’re somewhere clean, healed up and splitting a decent bottle of whiskey. I think you deserve a good thank you.”  
    He caught her meaning and shook his head. “I didn’t do it for gratitude.”  
    “Maybe not. But still, you need it and you really should take care of my needs too, you know. Mutual sacrifice and all those odd warm-fuzzy feeling comrade-in-arms feelings.”  
    Castiel sighed in an affectionately exasperated way. “If I must.”  
    She smirked and leaned into him. “That’s my angel.”

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> AN: I tampered with and borrowed a lot of mythology, both SPN, Biblical theology, and general myths.  
> Greek Rivers: Cocytus is the river of wailing but in the Divine Comedy it’s more of a frozen lake. Acheron is the River of Pain, Lethe the River of Obilivion.
> 
> Metatron is occasionally referred to as a version of Enoch (and vice versa) but for the sake of the story I made Enoch a type of vessel for him.


End file.
